Jamil Nasir was born in Chicago, Illinois, but spent much of his childhood in the Middle East, surviving two major wars and the local schools. He returned to the U.S. in 1970, and started college (at age 14), studying hard science, philosophy, psychology, Chinese history, and many other things, finally graduating from the University of Michigan with a Bachelors of General Studies degree. He also attended the University of Michigan Law School. Between stints at school he hitchhiked around North America, working as a carpenter, fruit picker, warehouseman, gardener, shop clerk, and paralegal, among others. He currently works on large regulatory and litigation cases at a Washington, D.C. law firm, and lives in a suburb of Washington with his two daughters. He holds a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo. His other hobbies are photography and rampant metaphysical speculation.
THE HOUSES OF TIME
Reconstructs reality with the ease and speed of the biggest virtual world, but there are no computers or singularities in sight. Knowing how to control your dreams is enough to create a Philip K. Dick world where reality is always up for grabs and about to change. . . .Nasir smoothly manages to pull off the old "it's all a dream" cliche in a way that stays fresh and surprising.
The Denver Post
Mind-bending . . . a wildly imaginative romp through worlds that leaves protagonist Grant gasping for air, and for his own life. At one moment, he’s a quadriplegic, “a head on a pillow,” inside a nursing home dreaming of snakes attacking him in his bed, and in the next he’s perfectly healthy, speaking lucidly with Kat, who remarks that she’s “honey-potted” (or nabbed) him as a mate. . . . It never ceases to amaze how Nasir is able to place Grant inside so many worlds while at the same time involving him in something of a coherent story. A dramatic arc exists within the various worlds, with the arc encircling Grant, shackling him inside straitjackets of time. Wouldn't it be a wild trip to meet God in the flesh? Nasir and his David Grant almost get there.
John T. Battaglia
Philadelphia Literary
Examiner
There is a distinctive mystical atmosphere in this thoughtful, intelligent, and very original novel . . . Readers who overlook this understated novel are doing themselves a disservice.
Don D’Ammassa
The Agony Column
Imagine if a talented hard SF author had handled the dreadful movie "The Butterfly Effect" instead of Hollywood, and managed to make an intelligent novel about faith and human consciousness.
J.M. McDermott
Author, Last Dragon
DISTANCE HAZE
Talented and original . . . This astonishing novel plunges the reader into a Lewis Carroll-like adventure . . .
Le Monde (France)
Truth proves stranger than fiction at southwestern Michigan’s Deriwelle Institute for the Technological Study of Religion, host to highly paid scientists who are building a computer model of the soul. Suffering from writer’s block and on the verge of a midlife crisis, 43-year-old science fiction writer Wayne Dolan agrees to his editor’s request to boost his lagging sales by writing a nonfiction piece about the Institute, which has been build on sacred burial grounds. He soon teeters between insanity and enlightenment: the eccentricities around him filter into his own life; vivid dreams of an Indian shaman lead him to deposit thousands of dollars into a mysterious bank account; and he falls for a crippled, dope-addicted prostitute who says her Nobel laureate father made her the guinea pig for a vaccine that eradicates what makes humans religious. In this captivating near-future novel, Nasir (Tower of Dreams) expertly blurs the already vague distinction between Wayne’s reality and fantasy.
Publisher’s Weekly
Jamil Nasir's fourth novel, Distance Haze, trembles somewhere between Doug Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars or maybe Dennis Overbye's Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I couldn't stop myself from reading out long passages to a new friend, and although I'm not especially adept at reading aloud the words flowed like honey, with just enough grains of pepper to gravel the tongue; it's a book for the ear, and perhaps for the inner eye . . . I suspect that on a single reading I missed some hidden pay-offs. So consider this less a review than a heads-up: go read the book, it's a treat.
Damien Broderick
x,y,z,t: Dimensions of
Science Fiction
In this marvelous book, Jamil Nasir creates a character whom he makes the embodiment of two incompatible world views. The first contends that awe -- communion with the world, fate or God (what could be termed "the numinous") -- is essential to an understanding of the world. The other view makes the scientific method the sole arbiter of what is real. . . . Distance Haze is the tale of Dolan's journey, an inward one which seeks release from the meaningless that a scientific worldview can engender. His path to transcendence is not smooth or gradual but punctuated with uncertainty and no small amount of middle-age sexual angst. The exposition of the scientific ideas confronted by Dolan on his journey, along with the description of their incorporation into the melting pot that is his mind and personality, make this a powerful work of SF.
Connor O’Connor
Rambles
TOWER OF DREAMS
A remarkable novel of perfectly controlled construction.
Le Monde (France)
Radiates authenticity . . . you’ll have a hard time putting the book down.
Minneapolis Star-TribuneA tour-de-force of setting . . . a remarkable book.
Russell Letson
Locus
American Blaine Ramsey works as a dream-digger, discovering cultural icons for use in corporate advertising. When a powerful image of an exotic Egyptian woman captures not only his sleeping but also his waking hours, Ramsey pursues his vision deep into the heart of a dying 21st-century Cairo. Nasir's latest novel combines the heady surrealism of his hero's dreamquest with the stark fatalism of his future version of the Middle East.
Library Journal
Sometimes we need reminders that our own world is more than what we generally make of it. In Tower of Dreams, Jamil Nasir takes the reader to the Near East of the near future, and reveals the Third World as it looks to someone who almost belongs there. . . . Nasir brings it vividly to life . . . Tower of Dreams reads like an elegy for a world on the point of destruction.
Faren Miller
Locus
The overall effect of the novel is that of a disturbing vivid dream. Recommend this great book to Neal Stephenson and William Gibson fans ready for a cultural cyberpunk twist.
Voya
Jamil has won the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, France's top science fiction award, as well as the Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation and a First Prize in the Writers of the Future Award.